


Parallel and Back a Bit

by orphan_account



Category: Monty Python RPF
Genre: ?? - Freeform, F/F, F/M, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Monty Python, Python - Freeform, Time Travel, Timey wimey… stuff, i guess?, michael Palin is a puppy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:48:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26242942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: She goes back as an experiment, really. But in the thirty days she has, she didn't expect to become attached to a Schrödinger's part of time that both did and didn't exist. Well, that and Schrödinger's people tempting her sinfully to become one of them, embraced in their warped reality. It started with Michael.
Relationships: Michael Palin/Eric Idle, Michael Palin/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 6





	1. Eyes Closed

Serena awoke, eyes still closed against the soft fabric of her makeshift eye mask, sounds blocked by the earplugs she had yet to remove. It could be any time of the morning or night, but it didn't matter. Although she would usually trudge out of bed, today was different. She lay still in the space between conscious and awake and reflected. The past three years had been eventful, to say the least. Finally working her logical mind through law school and trying to ignore the non-existent news from the dozens of auditions she'd attempted as one final pull into the world of the arts, she found herself in an experimental play still in a workshopping stage. Then came the travel. London. More auditions. And with the West End came Michael Palin playing opposite her in the strangest friendship she'd ever experienced.

Although old enough to be her grandfather, the perks (and pitfalls, perhaps) of constant shows and rehearsals with only two individuals sharing the vast majority of the dramatic dialogue was that one had no choice to spend the most intimate moments and emotions with one other person for months on end. Luckily for the unlikely co-stars, they seemed to get along with a soulful understanding and a passion for intellectual approaches to the arts. With the success of the drama came an indie film, shooting taking place as the shows still occurred. It was strange and exhausting and a sickening dream come true, and Serena and Michael only became better companions. She supposed she owed it all to the first week they met, after the second callback.

The show had a wildly tight schedule, and the delicate story demanded impeccable and incredibly convincing chemistry that usually called for actors who had worked together before. But their director decided to take a chaotic risk and hope for the best. He put Michael and Serena into a room and told them to talk about anything except working on the show. The hope was that the sharing of personal details would bring the two together in the way needed for the story of resolving familial conflict played out on the stage. Then again, they could disagree on something, anything, and then where would the story fall? There was nervous laughter, small talk, joking about, but she also remembered the vulnerable sides shared that day, the trust that was tiptoed around beginning to form into something solid and pure. The conversation steered to identity and mortality and tears following somewhere around the three-hour mark, and once they left the room, if they had been able to look back into the air itself, whispers of a true friendship began to yawn and stir with hope. That was that, but this morning was very different. Her director approached her one day, in a low voice, and asked to speak to her privately during a lunch break. She found Michael already there with a studious looking woman in navy slacks and a smart suit jacket to match holding what appeared to be thousands of papers with millions of signing boxes, clauses, notices, indexes, and liability agreements. Serena couldn't remember quite how the conversation began, but by the end, she had agreed to become a test subject (she reminded herself that the tests had already gone through, she was only an experiment in those successes) for a delve into... She couldn't even say it in her mind without thinking she was telling herself an elaborate joke. Time travel.

Well, from what she understood, it wasn't time travel as much as a shift of consciousness from reality to reality, at a certain place and time. It didn't make total sense but what did she care? The world itself was beginning to fade and lose meaning anyway. She agreed simply for the thrill, still not sure if she thought it was bullshit. A different reality. For how long? How, even? Would she be alone? Serena took a deep breath and made a mental note of the questions. She would find out in a few hours. Old introductions to Quantum physics played like several broken records all at once in her mind, going both as slowly as her steady breathing and what felt like the spiraling speed of light. One more deep breath and the silk slipped off her eyes as the questions of parallel reality slipped forcefully from her mind. She unplugged her ears and listened to the breeze in the trees outside her window, taking it all in. She had no clue when or how she would return to that room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is really more just a few placeholder chapters before I go into the time mindfuckery I already have planned a written, but here we are! Most of these ideas have come to me from daydreams or just dreams in general, and I really wanted to play around with that idea. I promise there's better material coming!


	2. Two Lines

Today was the day.

Hair freshly washed and almost obsessively brushed to soft layers, simply dressed, shivering slightly in the unnaturally cold June wind, Serena Zaman focused on what she'd agreed to do, her steps a result more of an unconscious momentum than any real concentration on walking. The inconspicuous bricks of a government building loomed at her, not backing down until she opened the door at the top of the steps and was led down several sets of stairs after a lengthy identification process. Serena had no idea the building went down this far, in fact she had no idea any of the buildings in the _country _could go down this far.__

__

The man leading her showed her into another small, almost claustrophobic room painted a somewhat unsettling off-white and a faded green. The woman from Serena's director's office introduced herself as Dr. Chawla with a friendly but calculated smile, donning an almost laughably stereotypical white lab coat and clutching a clipboard. Paired with the surreal situation and her incredible height, Dr. Chawla felt to Serena like something out of a science fiction movie. Michael greeted Serena as well, shaking her hand as he got up from his chair in the corner. Of the small cast of characters in the windowless room, the director, Jon, was the first one to say anything even mildly relevant.

"Serena, are you sure you want to go through with this? We're talking about consciousness crossing a fourth dimension. It's been tested, from what I've been involved with it's safe, but this whole operation is still in the 'Never Been Done Before' stage. You're a strong subject for it, but-"

Dr. Chawla interrupted politely, "This seems, to use an academic term, crazy. You've already signed the secrecy clause and the confidentiality clause. You have many more things to sign in a secure environment before you go on to the dimension shifting itself, but you have the option of going home and never speaking of this again if that's what you prefer. This is not to be taken lightly."

Serena had made up her mind the moment she got home the first day she was approached. She wanted, needed to do this for two reasons. One, it was something that was in the early stages of a complete scientific breakthrough, almost guaranteed safe in the environment she'd be in, but still a guarded secret that had _literally _unlocked a new dimension of time exploration. If she got lost, if her time ended, at least it would be doing something only a few people alive would ever do. She had next to nothing in terms of emotions in her reality anyway, what difference would it make to just cease existing. That was the first reason. The second was, of course, it was time travel.__

__

_Time travel. ___

__

It would be idiotic to pass up, she certainly couldn't live with herself then.

"I'm positive." She was anxious beyond comprehension, but she had never been more sure of anything in her life.

Sir Michael Palin smiled at his young friend before looking to Dr. Chawla for permission to elaborate on the... mission, as it were. Some small words were exchanged before he pushed himself up out of his chair and stood at a whiteboard, looking comically focused as he tried to choose where to begin what was clearly going to be a lengthy, virtually orderless explanation.

The actor took a deep breath.

"Your job, my dear Serena, other than not tearing apart the spacetime continuum, is to explore emotional connections between individuals who come from drastically different times. From what I understand, you were approached because of your intelligence, acting and improvisational background, and also because you have a strong relationship with yours truly, a near-octogenarian."

Michael laughed at the ridiculousness of his own statement before he moved on, switching marker colours for a new set of points. 

"You see, they haven't quite gotten to the point of dropping people in the middle ages. Furthest back anyone in this project has gone is somewhere in the 40s. Us commoners, of course, aren't privy to what year."

He grinned once more, with all the energy and life of a man decades younger.

"I come in because there was, coincidentally, a period in which I was relatively alone in my home for nearly two months because of some work I was needed for while my wife Helen and my children were on holiday with my in-laws. The scientists of the government aren't willing to pair you off with a complete stranger from the past, and a family member, as I'm told, brings in a mess of complications. So, Serena Zaman, my young friend, are going to try to form some kind of connection with my former self."

The young woman in question had sat down partway through Michael's explanation, and was now very glad she had. This was an incredibly dense bit of information to mull over. "Uhm." Serena said, rather intelligently. Michael took notice and quickly continued, creating strange diagrams and writing all over the whiteboard in front of him.

"The thing is, you're not quite qualified to possibly create a butterfly effect that could wipe out humanity as we know it and leave you stuck in time. So-' He drew a horizontal line across the board, 'This is the timeline we exist in. We're situated about here-"

He drew a small vertical line at the far right end of the one he'd just drawn.

"This is your birth,"

Another small notch further to the left.

"My birth..."

A notch even further left,

"And here's dear Queen Elizabeth's coronation."

With a triumphant flourish, Michael created a notch way over at the left end of the horizontal timeline, looking mighty pleased with himself. Remembering the situation, he continued explaining.

"This line-" He made another horizontal line, this time in blue, right above the red timeline one he'd just drawn, "Is a sort of... alternate reality, if you will, that exists in a quantum superpositional state of being existent and not being existent."

Seeing his makeshift pupil's desperately confused expression, he mumbled as he searched for an analogy. "You remember Schrödinger's cat, right?" Serena nodded, relived she finally understood anything anyone was saying in this room. "When the cat is in the box with the poison, it is both alive AND dead. This alternate reality is both existent and nonexistent with you in it. You see, it's not our reality, not ours at all, but it follows the RULES of reality. Everything from the very beginning of time itself up until this point-"

He drew a point on the upper blue line, situated somewhere in between where his and Serena's births were presented on the red bottom line.

"Will have transpired _exactly _as our universe has. You see, this is the moment you come in. You have a whole reality to yourself, exactly like our world, only in a different time that will be happening simultaneously with ours, only in the past, except it doesn't really exist, but it does, it's a dimension that's a little bit there-"__

__

Michael gave up his rambling, rubbing his temples. He got headaches fairly often, he always had, but rarely were they a result of his own incoherent babbling. He erased everything on the board except for the two lines.

"It's a parallel dimension, essentially. And you're just going to jump backwards in that timeline. Same date, different year. Does that even remotely make sense?" He asked almost hopelessly.

The young woman sitting in front of him, to his surprise, nodded. "More than before. Enough." She smiled slightly, grateful for her co-star and the passionate way he talked about things that mattered to him. She did understand the concept of the alternate timeline, for the most part. What she had to be reminded of was the objective of the project.

"Serena, love." Michael exhaled with a playful smile, " You're about to meet me, in a partially open marriage, away from my family for two months right before the summer of 1972."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small detail I've been thinking of adding is a kind of soundtrack for this story. The Chapter 2 playlist includes:  
> Dust in the Wind - Kansas  
> Skyfall - Adele  
> Smalltown Boy - Bronski Beat


	3. Open Marriage

And so began three weeks of isolation underground with government scientists and modern history enthusiasts (Michael unofficially included, of course).

Serena's days were packed full of medical tests and lessons on the culture of Britain in the early 70s, quantum mechanics, and parallel universe theory, and she was able to give input in creating her own false backstory. This was easily the most enjoyable part, piecing history with reality to create a person who was indeed still Serena Zaman, but this Serena was born in 1949 in Canada, traveling to England to pursue a law career. The young woman, of course, found it very strange indeed that she had to be taught and quizzed on every meticulous detail from what was going to be her whole life, but at least it kept her mind going.

In between, when they sat down for tea or when everyone else had gone to their simple quarters, Michael and Serena would talk. Sometimes they laughed dryly at jokes about the building collapsing in on them, about going insane, about what their families would think if the fragile alibi of a remote trip to a shooting location for weeks on end fell apart. One day though, Serena played with a dry curl at the end of her long dark hair, silently reminding herself to buy new conditioner if she made it out alive, and proceeded to finally ask the question she'd been pondering for days.

"What did you mean by a partially open marriage, earlier, when you were explaining what I'd be doing for the project?"

Michael gave a short sigh, almost barely noticeable, but clearly remembering his beloved wife Helen. He hadn't seen her in so long. Mind you, Michael was obviously used to spending long periods of time away from Helen to film or travel, he even attributed his successful and long-lasting marriage to the fact. But this was new, he'd been home fairly consistently for a few years now, always at least waving at each other as they passed in the hall if either of them was working or simply felt like being alone that day.

There were a few times in the first ten or so years of their marriage that Helen was away for whatever reason, travel or work or school or family, and Michael couldn't leave due to some damn filming, as he was explaining. And vice versa, of course, Michael sometimes had to leave for however long for work.

"Helen is the most wonderful woman the universe ever decided to fabricate, of course, and part of that is how practical and understanding she is. I could only dream of achieving her wisdom."

Michael chuckled in the comfortable silence they sat in, shaking his head.

"And so, after a talk about some... some feelings we were coming to terms with ('nothing at all bad about each other, of course, it barely pertained to our relationship at all', Michael hastily clarified), she told me she loved me more than life itself and then suggested we sleep with other people."

"I-I'm sorry?" Serena leaned forward, only mildly shocked, really, as Michael laughed again in a way that, for the majority of men his age, would be seen as jolly, but Michael had much too young a demeanor. His grin was, instead, still quite mischievous.

"Of course she didn't say it like that, and that was never what she would imply. I was as shocked as you are,"

Michael feigned a dramatic expression of surprise.

"But what we talked through ended up being that we had married rather young, and we never really got to explore that kind of intimacy with anyone else. So we concluded after many declarations of undying affection and loyalty to each other that, with the knowledge and approval of the other partner, we could... be intimate with someone else if we felt we wanted to try while we were apart for long periods of time. It was the time of Free Love, after all." The old man leaned back into the slightly worn armchair with a thoughtful expression, both deciding on his next words and waiting for a reaction.

Serena sat back with him, a bit dumbfounded that Palin, purest of the Pythons, was once reaping the advantages of an open marriage. Well, maybe he didn't. It would certainly be in his character to at least try not to, maybe it wouldn't hurt to ask.

She paused, smiling, and not knowing why, before she spoke again.

"So did you ever do anything with that?"

"Oh sure, not at first and still _very _rarely, but curiosity killed the cat, I suppose."__

He shifted in his chair and ignored any feelings of uneasiness he might've had even weeks ago talking to his young friend and mentee about his past exploits.

"It took a couple of trips and some reasoning with myself that I wouldn't come to love anyone, that wasn't possible. My rule, a very simple one to follow when you're married to your soulmate, was never to fall in love with someone else but my Helen."

Again, Michael smiled. A more private one this time, looking downwards into his plain ceramic mug, a smile just for him and the woman he never ceased adoring.

"We'd discussed other aspects of intimacy early on, dates, sensuality, developing friendships with those other people, and Helen and I agreed that we'd allow it as long as it didn't interfere with us and that it never turned into real romance. That might have seemed strange but in that time it was hard to focus on human connection when you were stuck at home with only the phone to find any vague whispers of touch, of an emotional connection. We would be... starved of touch. Touch-starved, is that what people say nowadays?"

Serena nodded instinctively, still processing Michael's words from thirty seconds before and onwards with confusion, but also a pang of empathy as the man across from her continued.

"Right. So logically it made sense. Still, I never felt I wanted to be with someone else in any way until Helen called from her work trip and said she had met a wo- someone down at the beach, and that I was her true love, and may she invite that someone into her bed for a short while if that was alright with her husband? Well, I was jealous, I was mighty jealous, but I knew she loved me more. And I knew she would have listened if I had told her no. But I held my tongue and I told her to go ahead, and she called me right afterward and told me everything I asked. I barely felt any jealousy anymore if I am, to be honest, I was happy for my wife and I knew she would be all mine when she came back home. God, I love her."

"I'll start taking a shot every time you mention your bloody lovely wife," Serena laughed. "Maybe I'll get to die quicker."

Michael took pains to hide his amusement but sighed in laughter with his head in his hands.

"Anyway- stop making me laugh, this is bloody important!- anyway, after hearing what a lovely time she had, I decided to try. Nothing bad at first, just some flirting and touching and immediately calling the Mrs., until finally, we both grew comfortable with the arrangement. It worked, I suppose. So, getting to the point, you're going into your timeline a while in but not too far, the year I started to get further into my emotions while Helen was on holiday."

Serena, who had been picking at a loose thread on her sweater, perked up her ears and blinked again before responding.

"I completely forgot about the whole Government time travel project shebang for a minute. Maybe what you've just said was... less believable? Of course, I believe you, but that... that is something I would never have considered in both our lifetimes."

"Don't have much time left to consider in my lifetime, I'm afraid. My expiry date is approaching at a pretty steady pace."

The two figures, young and old, man and woman, yin and yang, cross-continental comrades, laughed almost sadly together in their figurative bubble that was there for no other reason than ritualistic comfort, as the last of the crew had gone to their chambers hours before.

Suddenly more serious, his distinctive laugh lines becoming graver, Michael finally gave Serena more long-awaited context for the whole dimension shifting ides.

"You're going to report on human connection. You do have to interact with fake-young-me, although I understand this is a very uncomfortable situation so as long as you stay friendly with that Michael you'll be good to go. I'm just letting you know some context if that sounds like a possible, it is a mildly creepy direction- "

"Okay." Said Serena.

"Okay?" Asked Michael in reply.

Serena cocked one eyebrow in thought. "Okay. I'll figure it out, but thank you, Michael, for this insane context."

Michael laughed again, and both wordlessly decided to head back to their rooms to process their late-night interaction that was harder to digest than the fact that one of them was about to astral project from an underground government bunker.

* * *

"Okay, this is the room. That's a chair, and this is a book." Dr. Chawla, usually a calm and collected presence, was buzzing with excitement and showing her test subjects exactly what the project taking place today involved, mind you, in a rather hasty and energetic tone.

After about half an hour of one final culture and knowledge exam and furious note-taking, Serena and Michael were brought to a door neither of them had noticed in their several weeks at the compound.

"This room has been specially designed and built for interdimensional affairs, as it takes incredible concentration. Serena, you are the ONLY person allowed inside. It'll look strange, it's just a chair, but it acts as Schrödinger's box, in a way. None of us can be able to directly see or communicate with you, except for vitals and brain waves and..." The tall scientist reached toward a table by the door and picked up a brown, leather-bound book. "This is your means of communication. We've found that items with certain elemental make-ups can actually change with whoever is in another time. We've modeled this one after some of Michael's journals ("Diaries!" Michael interrupted) and this will be how you update us on everything that's been going on. Time actually changes and warps when shifting through time and space, unsurprisingly, for example, the thirty days you have will probably only feel like a few hours at most to us, UNLESS you are writing in the journal ("Diary..." Michael piped up again, more quietly this time.) in which case the time will stay the same for both parties. It's a concept we've been struggling with since we first began," explained Dr. Chawla, "but at least it's one we understand more."

Serena mentally prepared herself. "So... no longer than 30 days, create an emotional connection, report back with the diary, my conscience is in a partially real dimension, and I have to blend in perfectly?"

"Well, yes." said Jon, the director standing beside Dr. Chawla. Only recently had Michael and Serena found out he had been involved in the project for years. Who knew?

He continued on. "It at first takes concentration, but we can direct you to where and when you want to be if we know where and when you are. For example, when you're in that room, it's very easy to point you in the right directions with our techniques. If ever you want to come back, just write it down with the time and place and we'll do our best. It's worked for the others, I promise!"

Michael took Serena's trembling hand, a result of the mounds of stress being thrown at her directly.

"One thing to not be afraid of," Dr. Chawla took over from Jon, "Is if you suddenly find yourself in a different time. It has happened a few times that subjects concentrate too hard on any one thing such as a date on a calendar and find themselves months ahead. In that case, don't panic under any circumstances. Your guideline of thirty days goes by the time you are physically present in the timeline, not the time of arrival to the time you come back, wherever that may be. Do you remember your concentration and focus techniques to get yourself out of that situation should it arise?"

Serena squeezed her friend's hand until it was numb and nodded. "Yes ma'am." She spoke, hoping she had in fact learned enough.

The rest was a blur. Michael spoke words of confidence and pride and told her he loved and respected her as he had never felt about anyone in his life before. Then, she went into the room. The metal chair and cool fluorescent lighting made the room seem angular and sharp, but Serena Zaman sat down anyway, clutching one version of Michael's diary replica, holding her breath as the familiar voices of Chawla and Jon and Michael asked her to focus on the date, April 17th, 1972, and count down from 30. Suddenly, by the time she got to fourteen, the hue she could barely see through her eyelids changed, and the chair beneath her felt much softer. She was all of a sudden afraid of opening her eyes, not knowing where, or rather when, she was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Playlist for chapter 3:  
> -Un Clown ne pleure Pas, Christopher Laird  
> -Jolene, Dolly Parton  
> -Wuthering Heights, Kate Bush
> 
> (I know this chapter is convoluted, I promise I have more stuff written ahead!)


End file.
